Sherry Chandler » Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein
From Charles Bernstein, “Comedy” in A Poetics (Harvard, 1992):
What is to be regretted is not the lack of mass audience for any particular poet but the lack of poetic thinking as an activated potential for all people. In a time of ecological catastrophe like ours, we say that wilderness areas must not only be preserved but also expanded regardless of how many people park their cars within two miles of the site. The effect these wilderness areas have is not measurable by audience but in terms of the regeneration of the earth that benefits all of us who live on it—and for the good of our collective unconscious as much as our collective consciousness. I’ve never been to Alaska, but it makes a difference to me that it’s there. Poets don’t have to be read, any more than trees have to be sat under, to transform poisonous societal emissions into something that can be breathed. As a poet, you affect the public sphere with each reader, with the fact of the poem, and by exercising your prerogative to choose what collective forms you will legitimate. The political power of poetry is not measured in numbers; it instructs us to count differently.
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1 Comment
1. Sam L. Martin replies at 26th November 2007, 12:11 pm :
Great quote. Thank you, Sherry. Most poets today consider themselves to be little songbirds perched on a galvanized pipe in the bowels of a munitions factory.
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